This invention relates to the field of telephony, and in particular to intelligent call processing apparatus.
It is becoming increasingly common for businesses to establish call centers for dealing with customers, for example, to take orders and deal with customer queries. Often these will employ automated PBXs (Private Branch Exchange) that present the customer with a menu of choices and route the call to an appropriate attendant according to the customer responses.
The problem with existing systems is that while many calls are mundane, such as simple technical queries, and can be handled by semi-skilled operators, some calls, for example from irate customers with complaints, require handling by specially trained operators. It is important that such calls are effectively handled to prevent loss business. Under the present system, an attendant can manually pass the caller to the specially trained operator. Not only is this inefficient, the delay resulting from being handed to another attendant can often aggravate a sensitive customer who may already not be in the best of moods. It is not generally desirable for the caller to know that he or she is receiving special treatment.
An object of the invention is to alleviate this problem.
According to the present invention there is provided a call routing processing comprising a call answering device for answering an incoming call, an interactive voice unit for eliciting information about the call from the customer, a behavioral response device for analyzing the caller""s response according to predetermined criteria to identify callers having certain behavioral characteristics, and a routing device for routing callers identified as having said characteristics to predetermined attendant stations.
The behavioral characteristics can be the caller""s mood. For example, angry callers can be directed to specially trained operators.
The analyzing means can, for example, be a speech recognition device that detects high stress or annoyance, a Touch-tone timing device that detects caller impatience or annoyance as they enter touch-tone digits, a speech recognition device that detects the sex and approximate age of the caller (male, female, child), a speech recognition device that detects language characteristics, such as accents or stuttering.
With the apparatus in accordance with the invention, call centers can be much more effective. By automatically detecting the mood and switching the call to agents who are good at handling these types of calls, the transaction will be handled more smoothly, more quickly and with more customer satisfaction. The call can be handled by the attendant that is best for handling that kind of calls or the attendant could adapt his/her style to match the needs of the caller.
The invention also provides a method a method of routing calls in a call center, comprising the steps of receiving an incoming call in an interactive voice unit, analyzing the caller""s response according to predetermined criteria to identify behavioral characteristics, and routing the call to an agent selected in accordance with the identified characteristics.